


de veritate

by thedevilchicken



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Confessions, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Restraints, Rough Sex, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 09:50:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14102793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Dick's not always the first one Bruce calls when he needs help, but there's one situation where he's always the one Bruce needs.





	de veritate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FleetSparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetSparrow/gifts).



Dick's not always the first one Bruce calls when he needs help. 

Dick knows that. He's not particularly torn up about it because he also knows sometimes what a problem calls for is super strength or heat vision, the skills of Gotham's foremost cat burglar or hell, maybe just a guy who shoots arrows really, _really_ well. Dick is not that guy, though he's pretty sure he's at least as flexible as Catwoman is, could maybe handle a bow kinda like Green Arrow if he felt like putting in the practice hours pulling strings till his fingers were numb, and he really wouldn't turn down superpowers if there was a straightforward way to get them, though he might call in a quick background check if someone in the street made him an offer right out of the blue. 

Dick's not always Bruce's first call and he knows it. That's what makes it really matter when he is. That's when he knows he really needs him. Like that night, three weeks ago. 

Technically, Bruce wasn't the one who called; that was Alfred, on the line from the cave, because Master Bruce was indisposed. That's not a word that ever sounds good where Bruce is concerned - Dick knows _indisposed_ can mean anything from "I'm afraid he has company tonight, Master Dick" to "I'm afraid he's been kidnapped, drugged and strung up over a tank of man-eating sharks" plus every shade of everything between the two extremes. The shark thing has happened more than once over the years. Dick stopped being surprised about that a while back. He thinks the least Gotham's resident villains could do is arrange for a narwhal to impale him on its horn or an manatee to smother him to death, but no one ever accused Batman's rogues' gallery of any depth of originality. 

And, that night was no different: Gotham's villains all have their pet MOs and they stick to them like superglue, so the situation really came as no surprise once Alfred said the magic words - _Poison Ivy_. Dick thought he understood. He thought he knew what he was walking into. The problem was, he really, _really_ didn't. 

Bruce was already out of it when he arrived, though that didn't come as a surprise. He was bound hand and foot to his bed, naked, when Dick opened the door to the master bedroom and stepped inside; his face looked eerily calm but his muscles were tensed, pretty much all of them, from his biceps to his abs to his thighs to the way his hands were balled up into fists just above the leather restraints around his wrists and his neck stood out in straining cords. He looked at Dick as the door swung open. He had his jaw clenched. His cock was hard. Dick still really thought he understood. 

"One day, we're going to come up with an antidote," Dick said, as he peeled off his jacket and toed off his boots simultaneously. He tossed the jacket into a chair and nudged the boots underneath it, out of the way. "Or a vaccine. Or we'll just lock Ivy up and throw away the key. Abracadabra, no more sex pollen for you to get dosed with."

Bruce didn't say a word in response, but Dick guessed he hadn't exactly expected him to; after all, Bruce was never exactly garrulous at the best of times, let alone when he was Ivy's ridiculous sex drugs and watching Dick strip. This wasn't the first time this had happened, sure, but that didn't make it a whole lot easier to deal with - he knew Bruce hated this, because it rendered him so completely helpless, because it made him such a damned slave to the urges he'd tried so hard to purge, but they'd never been able to figure out a way to counteract it: once the liquid got onto your skin or the gas got into your lungs, that was it, fuck or die. That was the theory, at least - they'd seen some people survive exposure without having sex but half the people who lived to tell the tale wound up in Arkham. Somehow, they'd never felt like testing their own prowess in that direction. 

Dick hadn't, at least, though he'd somehow never been the one who'd gotten dosed. Bruce had tried to tough it out, on the other hand, because that was just the way Bruce was, but Dick had never felt much like waiting to find out if Bruce was going to drift off into death with a bad case of priapism and so he'd always lent a hand. This was the seventh time in a little over ten years. He didn't like to think about what it meant that Bruce had called him about this every time now, after those first two dumb attempts to sweat it out tied up in the cave. He didn't like to think about what it meant that he always came to help, except he knew he always did. 

He pulled off his t-shirt and he tossed it into the chair. He unbuttoned his jeans and shoved them down around his thighs, hopped around to shake them down his legs and toed them up onto the growing pile. His socks were next, then his underwear, then he was naked. Bruce was watching him, his cheeks flushed and his nails jammed in at his palms and his heels braced solidly against the bed. Dick told himself it was the same thing as before, that this was just how the job went sometimes, but he's never been sure he believes that.

"You'd think she'd get sick of this," Dick said, rubbing one hand over his hair as he moved toward the bed, and Bruce eyed him. "Or you'd think she'd come up with something new, at least. This is getting really, really old." 

He knelt on the edge of the bed. He crawled up, as if straddling Bruce's thighs while he was tied down naked was the most natural thing in the world and not deeply, deeply weird, even for the seventh time. 

"Do you need these?" Dick asked, gesturing at the restraints. Bruce nodded tightly, so Dick shrugged and he leaned over to the nightstand by the bed and left them in place. He pulled open the drawer and tried to ignore how Bruce's cock dragged against his abdomen as he did so, till he sat back up with a tube of lube in his hand. 

"So, what did you do to piss off Ivy this time?" Dick asked, almost conversationally if you didn't look too hard, as he uncapped the lube and coated his fingers pretty liberally. He glanced at Bruce's face and Bruce just looked at him, not quite scowling, not quite anything at all, except Dick could see the muscles standing out down both his arms where he was pulling the restraints around his wrists down tight. He was almost surprised that the big old wooden headboard hadn't given way already, considering the strain he had to be putting on it. Bruce was by no means a small guy. Bruce was by no means weak.

He stroked the lube over the length of Bruce's cock, making a loose circle with his fingers and thumb that he pushed the head through slowly, twice, three times, making Bruce's hips shift, making Bruce groan through gritted teeth. He pulled down harder at the leather cuffs that were buckled tight around his wrists and the headboard creaked pretty ominously. Apparently that was all the reply he was going to get, so Dick figured he'd stop trying for answers and just get this over with. 

He slicked Bruce's cock, tip to base then back again, as he watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest with each and every stroke. He'd done this before, sure, and under similar circumstances - he'd been nineteen years old the first time Ivy had caught Bruce with it and he remembered how appalled Bruce looked as he lay there after the first eight hours, a sheet over his erection till he couldn't bear to have even that much against his skin. Dick had seen what had happened to some of the others who'd been affected and he remembers making an executive decision as he looked at him, sometimes still and sometimes writhing, groaning against his own forearm like he felt he had to try to hide that. He'd seen what had worked for some of the others, too - so he'd settled down and he'd sucked Bruce's cock while Bruce groaned and groaned and groaned, but it turned out that wasn't enough, not even nearly. So, he took off his Robin suit and he lubed his own hole and he straddled him. He said he was sorry and he pushed Bruce up inside him. He told himself it was necessary, and Bruce definitely lived through the night, but they never talked about it afterwards. A month later, Dick left Gotham.

The second time, he was already Nightwing. Alfred called because he wasn't sure what else to do and so Dick drove back to Gotham and they didn't talk at all, not a single word, as Dick fucked himself on the length of Bruce's cock. The dosage must've been higher that time, or maybe the effect had been magnified by the time that had passed, because Bruce had been suffering in semi-silence for twenty-seven hours by then - it took three times before his erection subsided, Dick's thighs strained and his back tight and his own cock hard, but he put on his clothes and he left straight after. He didn't wash Bruce off his skin till he was home in Bludhaven. He got himself off in the shower, one hand around his cock and two fingers of the other shoved up hard inside himself. He didn't try to pretend he wasn't thinking about Bruce, though he probably should have.

The third time, Bruce called. His voice sounded strange when he said Dick's name and when he asked what was wrong, all Bruce said was, _Ivy_. Dick asked if he was asking for his help; Bruce paused but then he said yes, so Dick went back to Wayne Manor to help him. Bruce kept one arm barred over his eyes and one hand at the headboard at all times and Dick thought whatever, screw it, _whatever_ , and he stroked himself till he came on Bruce's chest. Bruce didn't seem to mind. He came inside him maybe fifteen seconds later, and then Dick left. 

The fourth time, Tim called to say Bruce needed him. Dick told Tim to leave, to go somewhere else, go see Steph or check into a hotel, _anything_ except staying there, and by the time he arrived, only an hour since Bruce's most recent dose of Ivy's pollen, Tim was dutifully gone. Dick went down to the cave and he undressed Bruce himself and once Bruce was naked, his jaw clenched and his cock hard, he reached out both hands to Dick's clothed hips. Dick would have let him do whatever he wanted, he thought, he _knew_ ; he would've let him push him down over the big steel table there in the cave's medical bay, he would've let him push his jeans down past his hips and rub his cock between his cheeks. He would've let him fuck him however he wanted to, he knew that, but Bruce yanked back his hands and stepped away. They went upstairs and Dick rode him instead, just like the fifth time, and the sixth. They've never talked about it. Not even once. 

But that night, the seventh time, it was different. He stroked the lube over Bruce's cock and he rubbed the lube between his own cheeks and he shuffled up, letting the tip of Bruce's thick erection drag lightly between his legs. He spread his thighs out wide and he guided the head of Bruce's cock up to his hole. He let it press there, bluntly. 

"Gag me," Bruce said, between clenched teeth. 

Dick frowned. "What?" he asked, not totally sure he'd heard what he'd thought he'd heard, though he did think he'd heard it. 

He watched Bruce. Bruce paused, looking up at him, then he visibly struggled to relax his jaw enough to unclench it. He winced, pulling harder at the restraints around his wrists. 

"I said, gag me," he said again. "Before I say something we'll both regret." 

Dick's frown deepened. "I don't understand," he said.

"It's an interrogation agent," Bruce told him, his voice ragged round the edge with strain. "It's a truth serum. It's not just sex. You need to stop me." He yanked down hard at the restraints. "Dick. _Stop_ me." 

He meant to do it. He probably could've found a scarf or a tie or something, anything, to keep Bruce from running his mouth, but the next thing he knew the slats in the headboard finally gave way with a crack and a crunch and a splinter. Dick knew the cuffs had been there for a reason because Alfred had told him _thirty hours_ \- Bruce pulled himself free and Dick tried to stop him but he had to admit that his heart wasn't in it. In seconds, Bruce had the ankle cuffs unbuckled, too. He was free and the next thing Dick knew, Bruce had turned his attention back to him. The next thing Dick knew, Bruce had pushed him down on his back against the mattress. The next thing Dick knew, Bruce was on top of him, hot and hard, his expression not very far removed from wild. 

"I wish you'd stopped me," Bruce said, as he pressed his mouth down to the side of Dick's neck, as his teeth scraped his skin, but Dick wasn't sure he shared that sentiment. Bruce settled down between Dick's thighs. Bruce went up on his knees between them and he ran his hands over the insides of them, right up to where Dick's legs met body, thumbs rubbing at the creases there just for a moment. Then Bruce pressed one hand down over Dick's hard cock, Bruce's fingers wrapped around him and he stroked him, he shifted closer and he caught Dick's cock alongside his own he and stroked them both just briefly before he moved again. He stroked them before he spread his own knees and hitched up Dick's thighs and he rubbed the tip of his cock and the tips of his fingers down over his perineum, behind his balls, to Dick's slicked-up hole. 

"I've wanted this for years," Bruce said, his voice low and strange. "I've wanted _this_." He rubbed Dick's hole flatly with two fingers, teasing the tip of one inside just a fraction. "I've wanted _this_." He wrapped his free hand around Dick's thick cock and squeezed. "Since before the first time Ivy did this. Since the thought of having it made me feel sick." 

Bruce shifted. He pressed the tip of his cock to Dick's hole; he pressed forward; Dick felt himself stretched open, felt Bruce push just the head inside, felt himself squeeze tight around him. He hitched up his knees, wrapped one leg around Bruce's waist and tucked the other knee up over Bruce's shoulder. Bruce groaned. Bruce pushed in all the way in one single thrust and it made Dick gasp and grasp what was left of the splintery headboard. 

"Sometimes I think I look forward to Ivy doing this to me," Bruce said, with his head thrown back, with his neck stretched taut, as he moved in him. "Sometimes I think about finding her and using it as an excuse so I can do this to you without thinking about consequences. What does that make me?"

Bruce leaned down. Bruce leaned over him, both palms to the bed supporting his weight as he shifted his hips, his cock moving inside Dick, deep and slow. Dick's hands moved, went up to Bruce's biceps and gripped there, tight, then tighter. It made Bruce look him in the eye, which was exactly the point. 

"It makes you an idiot," Dick replied, bluntly. "You never needed an excuse, Bruce. God knows you don't need one now." So there it was, all their cards on the table. 

Bruce winced. Bruce pushed up inside him right to the hilt. And he leaned down, awkwardly, but neither of them seemed to care about the angles as Bruce crushed their mouths together and Dick twisted his fingers tight in Bruce's hair. And when Bruce pulled back, he moved again. His cock shifted. He went up on his knees and pumped his hips and Dick wrapped his hand around his own cock and pushed himself down against Bruce's and frankly, it didn't take long after that until he came. It didn't take much longer till Bruce came after. 

Bruce left the room when he was done and walked away, and Dick remembers laughing wryly to himself, wondering why he'd thought anything would change just because Bruce hadn't been able to keep himself from saying things he he'd never meant to. He went home. Bruce hasn't called, but Dick guesses he hasn't really expected him to call. Honestly, knowing what's going on in Bruce's head hasn't made any of this any easier; he'd always hoped they'd talk about it, but the conversation he got that night really wasn't what he meant. 

But now, there's a knock at the door, and when he calls, "Who is it?" Bruce replies, "Dick, it's me." 

He opens the door. He stands belligerently in the doorway, blocking the way inside, because he hasn't been waiting for this. He hasn't hoped for this. At least he tells himself he hasn't.

"What are you doing here, Bruce?" he asks, brusquely, and Bruce looks at him, levelly, standing there in the hall in his shirt and his slacks and not any flavor of the batsuit, though Batman turning up out of the blue might have been ten times easier, and not just for Dick. 

Bruce looks at him, considering. He rests one hand at the door frame, rubbing at the paintwork with one thumb. He clenches and unclenches his jaw. He grips hard at the frame.

"Do I need an excuse?" he asks, carefully, deliberately, so Dick can't doubt for a second what he means though meaning what he means is never something Dick could have hoped to expect. 

"No, you don't," Dick replies, and, slowly, he stands aside to let him in. Bruce enters and Dick closes the door behind him. He turns the lock and he watches as Bruce moves, as he walks around the room like it's the first time he's been there when he knows that it's not, lifting things and putting them back down like it's Bruce Wayne's psychiatrist's office and not just Dick's apartment, the same as it always is.

"I think we need to talk," Bruce says, his back still turned, and Dick nods in agreement though he knows Bruce can't see him. 

"We really do," he replies, but neither of them says another word. They turn silent, but it's not their normal kind of silence, working silence or frustrated silence or that silent way they understand each other sometimes just because they've known each other so damn long. He can see the tension in Bruce's shoulders and down the length of his spine. He can see how hard this is for Bruce. He wishes he knew why Bruce thinks it's easier for him somehow, because he'd swear on his life that it's not. 

Then Bruce looks at him. And it's clear he hasn't run into Poison Ivy, but the way he looks at him is almost the same somehow despite that, and Dick's taken so off-guard that he's completely floored by it. Bruce is allowing himself to look at him that way. He doesn't have to, he really doesn't, and that thought makes Dick's chest feel tight, even if for most normal people in the world this wouldn't be so goddamn hard. It makes him think there might be hope there after all, and that's dangerous, but frankly so is Bruce.

They don't say another word because Bruce moves, slowly, giving him time to see what his intentions are and stop him if he needs to, but Dick has no intention of stopping him now - he wants to see where this goes, if it goes anywhere at all. They don't say another word because Bruce kisses him instead, Bruce's mouth's on his, Bruce's fingers in his hair, and the next thing Dick knows, his back's against the door and his legs are pulling tight round Bruce's waist. He figures if Bruce can't take his weight like this then no one can, short of Superman. Still, until three minutes ago, he'd've said he stood more of a chance with Clark than with Bruce.

They'll talk later, he thinks, or maybe they won't and it will all fall apart. But for now, for once, Bruce's mouth at Dick's neck and his hands on his skin make it clear what he wants and that he knows he wants it. For now, Dick thinks that's more than enough.

Dick's not always the first one Bruce calls when he needs help and he knows it, but there are ten others, twenty, that Bruce could have called for Ivy help ahead of him. On some level, Dick knows Bruce made his choice years ago, even if he's only now admitting it as he pulls off Dick's shirt. 

Dick's not always the first one Bruce calls when he needs help and that's the truth of it. But he does call when he needs him - when he needs _him_ \- and that really is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Latin quote: _de veritate disputandum est_ \- basically, "truth is disputable" or "concerning matters of truth, there must be dispute".


End file.
